Race On To Increase Biofuel Yields
With controversy surrounding the economics of biofuel production and nagging doubts about its large-scale sustainability, researchers have now turned their…
Chromosomal Changes Show Effects Of Climate Change
Researchers from the University of Oregon (UO) have produced the first chromosomal map showing the regions of mosquito chromosomes that…
An Exoplanet With Liquid Water?
European astronomers say they have detected a distant Earth-like planet with conditions that might allow liquid water to exist. The…
Laughing Gas Levels From Biodiesel Crops Not Funny
The wide uptake of biodiesel will not make any difference to global warming and could result in greater emissions of…
Monkeys Demonstrate Metacognitive Skills
The ability to reflect on one’s knowledge was thought of as an exclusively human ability, but it seems that other…
Green Tea Suppresses Inflammatory Autoimmune Response
A compound found in green tea appears to reduce the inflammatory responses associated with autoimmune diseases, say researchers from the…
Mites Re-Evolve Sexual Reproduction
Researchers from the University of Darmstadt in Germany and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry reported this week…
Ethanol Vehicles A Health Hazard
Ethanol advocates say that it’s a clean-burning fuel that is friendly to the environment. But a study by Stanford scientists…
Cell Phones To Blame For Deserted Bee Colonies?
A small study from Landau University in Germany suggests that the navigational capabilities of honeybees may be adversely affected by…
Quantum Shenanigans Of Photosynthesis Mapped
Photosynthesis’ amazingly efficient conversion of solar energy into chemical energy relies on sunlight being converted almost instantaneously, but how this…
Exoplanet Imager Takes Shape
NASA researchers have customized a space telescope with special masks and mirrors which they believe could allow it to take…
“Construction” Protein Found
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered a protein that causes two neighboring cells to fuse and become one super-cell. Such…
The Disappearing Male
A new study from the University of Pittsburgh has found that during the past thirty years, the number of male…
Astrophysicists Ponder Giant Cosmic Hiccup
The Westerlund 1 magnetar in the Ara constellation, about 15,000 light-years away, has been observed spewing out X-rays in a…
Battlefield Byproduct Damages Lungs
The high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide gas produced following fires, explosions of military munitions or detonations of terrorist devices can…
Modified Rabies Virus Could Tackle HIV
Scientists from Jefferson Medical College say they have produced viral immunity to an AIDS-like disease by using a weakened rabies…
Dung Critter Lifts Mood
Scientists from the University of Bristol and University College London have found that treating mice with soil bacteria altered their…
Fungicide Causing Unusual Epigenetic Changes In Rats
Epigenetic changes (inherited changes in gene regulation that occur without a change in DNA sequence) caused by a common fruit…
Plummeting Shellfish Stocks Blamed On Shark Overfishing
The fragile and complex nature of ocean ecosystems is becoming ever more apparent as scientists uncover new relationships between diverse…
West Antarctic Ice Sheet Gets Climatologists Hot And Bothered
A statement just issued by a gaggle of polar ice scientists has warned that unless we come to grips with…
Neuronal Behavior Confounds Expectations
The idea that the electrical signal patterns generated by neurons represent the encoding of different types of cognitive information appears…
Bacterium Fires-Up Plain Air Fuel Cell
British researchers at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society today announced a new kind of “biofuel cell” that…
Limited Resources The Key To Biodiversity?
Somewhat counter-intuitively, experiments conducted by University of Minnesota (UM) researchers have shown that a plentiful supply of water and nutrients…
Biochemical “Noise” Critical For Regulating Biological Processes
Noise, like the static heard on AM radio, is generally thought to be a nuisance in most applications. But within…
Getting Physical With Molecules
The same researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI) who came up with self-healing plastic have described in…
Manganese Key To Radiation-Proofing Of Organisms
Exploring methods to protect living organisms from chronic or acute doses of radiation, military researchers say they have uncovered how…
Sex Optional For Evolutionary Adaptation
The pond-dwelling microscopic invertebrates known as bdelloid rotifers gave up on sexual reproduction more than 40 million years ago but…
Martian Caves Could Harbor Life
Scientists poring over images from Mars Odyssey believe they have identified what could be the entrances to seven large caves.…
Chill Out To Evolve
Species don’t evolve faster in warmer climes as had been thought; rather, it appears to be cooler, more temperate, regions…
Angry Looks Trigger Reward Circuits
Angry facial expressions are a turn-off for most people, but some people find angry expressions so rewarding that they will…